Revalation HW2
by Flibbertygibbet
Summary: A foe more deadly and ruthless than the Beast has surfaced, with advanced technology and terrifying weapons, can Hiigara withstand their seige? PG - Due to slight language, violence.
1. The Beginning

Authors Note: This is my first fanfic I have ever written, for HW2 or otherwise. I will try to post often, about once every two weeks, although sometimes it may be shorter than that, depending on how much I've written. For example: I wrote this first chapter in about 4 hours. I don't know if I'm able of doing that again, but if I am, updates will be much more common, obviously. This story is about a captian whom I haven't named yet, his patrol squadron, and the unkown enemy that hunts them. Enjoy.  
  
Chapter One - The Beginning  
  
The ship was humming slightly, as it usually was. Nothing out of the ordinary, same old ship, same old crew, same old mice scurrying about the decks of the ship, nothing unusual. How incredibly boring. Captain Dren Sher-Ka was on one of the lower decks, staring out at the Maktaar nebula, as he found himself doing recently. Staring out at space, that is, not the nebula. The squadron of ships was rarely in the same sector of space for more than a few cycles, so it was very hard to stare at the same thing for very long, espescially when you had duties as the captian of one of the most powerful frigates in the Hiigaran Navy. Not that it was a huge responsiblity as of late, the last of the Vaygr forces had been mostly eradicated or captured, except for some of the most stubborn ones, but there weren't any of those battle groups anywhere near them. And as a result, a few carrier-groups had been dispatched as hunter-killer squads to find the last of them, and the majority of the Navy was on stand-down or dispatched on patrol routes. And so was his squad. It was an impressive force, 6 Flak Frigates, 4 Torpedo Frigates, 4 Ion Cannon Frigates, 3 Pulsar and regular Gunships each, and 5 Bombers and Interceptors each. There was also 1 Scout group, but they were just there for scanning derilects if they were found, or, if nescassarry, enemy forces. After every 40 cycles, they rendevouzed with one of the carriers that was assinged to them. There were several carriers, but they were all servicing multiple groups, not just his. But it wasn't usually nescassarry. They had only twice encountered enemies, the first time had been a Turanic raiding party, but they had been caught off gaurd by Dren and were quickly dispatched. The second one, however, had been Raiders of the same clan as the previous ones, probably out for revenge on their kiith-brothers. They might have been a problem, if the scout group hadn't been scanning a cluster of asteroids containing a newly discovered and highly unstable element. As they were scaning said asteroids (keeping a safe distance so as not to be overcome by radioactivity), the second scout picked up a blip on the radar, and turned to the direction of the source. She scanned the area and found a compliment of Bandits, mostly fighters, missile fighters, and three Assasin class Ion Array Frigates. Upon this discovery, they immediatly retreated to the saftey of the group. They changed their course, circling around the Pirates and came up behind them, close enough to be in cannon range, but not close enough so they could be detected. The Pirates did not have the best long range radar, and four well-placed Ion beams effectivley ripped out the engines of two of the Frigates before they knew what hit them. The Ion Cannons then turned on their axis while still firing, raking the side of the other Frigate, slicing off three of its magnetic web extenders, the fourth beam punctured right behind the bridge and right in front of the engine, penetrating the plasma drive, causing it to go critical and explode quite suddenly. A good half of the fighters were caught within the blast radius, melting from the heat and exposing the pilots that weren't killed instantly from the extreme heat to the vacuum of space. The interceptors and gunships cleaned up the rest, and then the group left, leaving the two disabled frigates, having destroyed its com and radio, so it could not move or call for help. But that was not the point. There really wasn't a point, in fact. Captain Dren sighed slightly as he tore himself away from the window, and slowly walked to the lift to return to the bridge for the daily system inspections. The doors opened, and he saw his first-mate Nuun-S'Jet also riding the lift. He immediately stood at attention, hand raised in salute.  
  
"Hello, captain, sir."   
  
"At ease, S'Jet, no need for formalities."  
  
"If you say so, sir," He responded, with extra emphasis on the last word.  
  
He lowered his hand from his forehead as Dren shook his head and laughed. He had an interesting sense of humor. He pressed the button on the wall panel labled 'Bridge' in large, clear letters. The lift shook slightly as it started it's ascension, but then smoothed out and speeded up. It took about 10 seconds to reach flight-deck level, where the bridge was located, but he didn't notice. He had been on this ship so long, everything was routine. He exited the lift, and looked back at Nuun.   
  
"Where you headed to now?"  
  
"Oh, you know, back up to nav deck for even more course planning. We have to avoid that newly discovered dark-matter cluster at the edge of the Shren-ka disc. How fun." He added sarcastically.  
  
"Well, you'd better get up there, then. Inspections are in 30, and I don't want to fly into a dark matter cluster and be vaporised, thank you very much."  
  
"I'll get right on it," He responded with an exagerated wink as the lift doors slid shut. He turned and walked down the corridor that led to the bridge. Well, didn't quite walk, more leaped slightly. He liked a bit of spring in his step, and kept the artificial gravity turned down rather low. Perhaps a tad bit lower than it should have been, but no one really minded. And a good deal of the younger officers enjoyed leaping off of walls down the hallways, speeding past other (often startled) people. This practice had become common, actually, and they had formed a game out of it. Whoever could leap the farthest (the gravity was strong enough so that they couldn't float all the way across a corridor) would win, and some had invented a race/game of tag, but Dren wasn't sure how exactly how they played it. He did know, however, that the amount of races had decreased when one of them had hurled himself down the research corridor and crashed into another person carrying a contained piece of a new alloy with strange radioactive properties. It had smashed open, exposing both men, and they had both been in the ward for a good deal of time with odd symptoms that included fur growing all over their bodies, growing a tail, oversized ears about 6 inches long, and claws on their feet. But they were eventually cured (more so the effects actually wore off then were cured), but they still acted strangely. Nonetheless, Dren stepped up to the door to the bridge, a scanner popped out of the ceiling, and took a retinal scan of his left eye.   
  
"Good day, Captain Dren Sher-Ka, and welcome to the bridge," The cool female voice stated. He walked through the door, and a magnificent site opened before him. The bridge was about 7 different levels, one level dedicated to individual tasks. There was one for ship systems, research, life support, nav, com, combat systems, and the overall command level, watching over every aspect of the ship. One of the senior officers greeted him and went back to his computer screen. He floated over to his command chair, and grabbed it by the back so as not to overshoot his target. The bridge was the one place where low gravity could be a major annoyance. It was arranged with the seven levels along a common wall along the back, with the seventh level forming the 'floor' on the bottom, and reached out farther than the other levels to support the special super-dense glass window that formed the ceiling and the other three walls, stretching up all seven levels, overlapping the top and connecting to the rest of the frigate. Only the seventh floor was connected to it, the others were free-floating, connected only to the back wall. It was designed so that several mini-lifts could connect all the levels for quick access to every other one, but with the low gravity, you could float over to the glass and bound downwards or upwards to wherever you needed to go, as long as you got the angles right. This was the downfall of many a rookie in the bridge, un-expierienced as in how to get to other levels, but they eventually got the hang of it. It eventually came to pass where once a month, someone was elected (usually whoever wasn't working at the moment) to take a squegee and remove the shoe-prints from the window, as they often got so concentrated that it became hard to see out into space, and was unpleasant enough on its own. And it was getting close to time to get it cleaned again. Dismissing this thought, Captain Dren floated down into his chair, pressed a button on the arm, and a slit opened up on the floor next to him. A long, thin sheet of glass with anti-G transponders on either side floated up and over to him, and presented itself at an angle appropriate for typing. Symbols flickered into life across it's surface, and it became what it was: a hovering keyboard. He switched on his headset, and gave the command for the LEDs to turn on. At the floor and on the ceiling, 6 LEDs opened sots on either side of the main body of itself, and small antennas exited from them. They flashed once, and roared into life, spitting individual lines of code into the air around him. They eventually materialized a 3-D menu around Dren. He swiveled his chair to the left, brought up a sub-menu, and activated the Frigate's PA system.  
  
"Attention all crew members of Hiigaran Ion Cannon Frigate Three-Oone-Four, prepare for monthly inspections," he announced.  
  
"Aye, Captain, standard protocols engaged, preparing for inspections," Dozens of voices responded. Standard prototocols. Even more procedures. He couldn't stand them. But it's not like he had a say in how things were run in the Hiigaran Navy. He was a simple pawn, among hundreds of others in this game. What they were even playing for, he didn't know. He did what he was told, and only knew what command felt like he should know, and at the moment, that wasn't much. He was just running a simple patrol squad. The inspections began, as he went through all of the ship's systems and stations, making sure that everything was up to date, starting with weapons controls. As the most important part of the ship (even though that is debatable) , he had to have no doubt that they were running properly. The senior officers of the weapons (who was a slightly strange man, but he had spent most his life around machines that could de-molecularize just about anything, so it was to be expected from him) reported that everything was running properly, and after going through all of the sub-systems of the weapons, he added with a growl, "I haven't blown anything up in 3 months, and I'm getting bored, and me bored can be a very bad thing. . .". Dren rolled his eyes and laughed slightly. He went through all of the other 6 systems on the ship, and, to his surprise, everything was in ship-shape. That was an oddity, because usually, something, somewhere, had managed to blow itself up and needed serious repair. But, that just meant less work for him and the other officers, which was a welcome change from last month's fiasco, which had occured from some piece of machinery being to near the charged particle accelerator of the Ion Cannon too long, and exploding sometime after being moved back to the life support deck, breaking open some tanks filled with assorted chemicals, and causing them to react with each other, creating a nauseating gas that caused extreme drunkness spreading through the lower decks of the ship. The latter of the symptoms was discovered by one unfortunate woman, who stumbled around the deck, eventually finding herself in the janitors closet 13 decks above where she started and on the other side of the ship, and not quite sure how she got there. Everyone had walked around the ship with gas masks on for the next 2 weeks, but the gas eventually deteriorated, much to the releif of most people. Dren finished the last inspection, and closed down the sub-menu after a draining 3 and a half hours. He shut down the computer and stood up, yawning widely. He turned to the door and walked towards it, when his Nav officer suddenly shouted' "Captain, we have multiple unidentified contacts closing in on our posistion!" 


	2. Battle of Fate

Revalation2  
  
Chapter 2 - Slaughter  
  
"What?! Bring up a visual! Open all hailing frequencies! Find out who they are and why they're attacking us!" Dren twirled around and ran over to his com officer, who was tapping away at her keyboard with maddening speed.  
  
"I don't know who they are, but their ships aren't like anything I've ever seen!" She typed in a command and scanned the ships, then ran a search through the Hiigaran warship database. "They don't match any ship we've ever encountered, sir, and deep penetration scans seem to not be able to penetrate the ships, I think they have some sort of absorbant armor that, deflects or eats our radio scans! I can't tell what they are!"  
  
"Well, find out what they are packing so we know what we're dealing wit- !"  
  
An explosion rocked the ship as a flash of bright white light surrounded the Frigate.  
  
"They've opened fire! Scrambling the fighters and going to offensive tactics, Sir!"  
  
"Engineering, what's the damage?" He shouted over the cries of pain from the flash overloading the crew's eyes, blinding them momentarily, but not causing permanent damage.  
  
"Whatever that was, it only clipped us, Sir, but we have serious damage spreading across the side of the Frigate! That thing impacted the side and spread some sort of corrosive across the hull, but it seems to have stopped, now!"  
  
"Did we get a hull breach?"  
  
"No, it just ate away at the armo-"  
  
"Wait a minute, did you say CORROSIVE!?!?"  
  
"Yessir, of some sort. . ."  
  
At that point, something sped past the topside of the Frigate, leaving a contrail of purple-ish tint. Dren turned and looked out of the window. What he saw terrified him. Spindly, oddly disfigured purple fighter-sized ships were flying circles around his fighters. Every 2 or so seconds, one would let off a thin, bright beam of energy that lasted only a millisecond, but caused one of their fighters to explode in a burst of flames.  
  
"What. . . Are they?" He wondered aloud. Someone yelled and snapped him back to reality.  
  
"Captian! We have dozens of Frigate-class ships incoming! They seem to be firing missles of a ridiculously high speed!" Dren traced one of the missles flight with his eyes as hit flew and suddenly connected perfectly with a Torpedo Frigate. There was a small burst of energy, and a gray spot appeared where the missle had connected with the Frigate, and it grew quickly. Suddenly, he realized that this was the very same corrosive that they had been hit with.  
  
"Sajuuk have mercy. . ." He gasped as the corrosive ate through the top of the Frigate, breaching the hull. Dozens of specks of what he knew to be the bodies of his Kiith-brothers and sisters flew out of the hole, and the ship gave a horrible groan, then depressurized and imploded in a ball of flame.  
  
"Captain, we're being slaughtered!" Someone yelled. As if in a dream, not fully believing what had just happened, he gave an order.  
  
"Tell all remaining fighters to dock with the Frigates and set hyperspace coordinates for the nearest hyperspace gate. Get me the telemetry of the battle as soon as you can." After the war on the Vaygr, all frigates had been outfitted with two ports for fighters or gunships to dock on so they could be ferried through hyperspace. He was expecting the fighters to dock for safety.   
  
"Sir, there aren't any fighters left!" An officer responded as another flash exploded around them. Dren suddenly came back to reality.  
  
"Well, what are you waiting for?! Get us out of here now!"  
  
"Yessir!"  
  
The unearthly blue field opened up around their ship, and closed in over them. The vortex of hyperspace surrounded them, and they gained speed, rumbling uncontrollably. As they broke the speed of light and they successfully compressed themselves into a molecular strain traveling through space, the rumbling stopped. He floated over to his chair and slumped into it, rubbing his forehead, sighing heavily. "Tactical, what are our losses?"  
  
"All fighters and gunships lost, three Flak Frigates and two Torpedo Frigates gone, but we didn't lose any Ion Cannons, somehow."  
  
"Kharak have mercy on us. . . Their weapons, so powerful. . . How is it possible?" He sat up straight in his chair as a beep announced the complete upload of the telemetry. The hover keyboard floated up, and the LEDs activated the screen. He started the recording. It showed the squadron traveling through space, and suddenly off in a N-W-N direction from them, a portal of some sort opened up and then closed again. Nothing had seemed to come out of it, but. . . There! A cloaked ship about the size of a carrier materialized. "Cloaked, I see, but why didn't we detect them before they fired on us?" The carrier class ship had a central streamlined, disfigured body with an openning on the underside. From it came several corvette-class ships, that turned towards them and came at them. Two spindly arms held two crooked tubes of some sort under the main portion, and were slighty spread away from it. They was an opening at the end of it, and it began to glow purple from deep within. Then, a pod shot from the tube at an insane rate of speed. Dren turned on slo-motion tracking, and saw the pod fly at his Frigate, clipping the side, spreading the corrosive. As it sped past, it split open, and out came one of the spindly fighters that had annhilated their own. Several Frigate-class ships materialized around the carrier as it fired more and more pods, at least four a second, for about thirty seconds. The Frigates were dark and looked inactive, but then flickered to life without warning, activating fusion drives and firing missles at the squad. The Torpedo Frigate he had watched die was hit with a missle, and he looked away as the corpses were sucked out into space and the ship imploded. At that point, the Flak and Torpedo Frigates had caught on, activating mass drivers, firing at the fighters. A cloud of flak exploded around a group of them, and a dark cloud surrounded them. He smiled triumphantly as the flak dissapated, but then his jaw dropped as the fighters flew out of the cloud, totally unharmed. "Not even a scratch. . ." By now the remaining fighters under his control had been vaporized, and the frigates had stopped firing, all turning, and the hyperspace gates opened in front of them. They closed over them, and the recording ended. He closed his mouth and shook slightly from fear. They hadn't even suffered a single loss, while his squad had been nearly devastated.   
  
"We will exit hyperspace in three minutes, Captain," one of his officers reported, causing him to jump. "Shall I transfer the telemetry to the research department?"  
  
"Yes, please do. Find a countermeasure of any sort, find a weakness, do anything we possibly can. And the instant we exit hyperspace, alert Hiigaran command of this new threat."  
  
"Yes Sir, right away, Sir," She responded, and she walked back over to the computer modules. He stood up, too, and hovered over to the computers. He floated up to his weapons officer, who was busy scanning the corrosive that had been spread along the side of their ship and that had been the death of the Torpedo Frigate, and quite possibly some of the other Frigates as well; The telemetry data was not perfect, and it only detailed what had happened from a 3rd person view from his Frigate, and the field of vision was surprisingly narrow. He looked over the shoulder of his weapons officer, he had just finished an intial scan of the pods that the carrier-ship had been firing, they too had corrosive properties, as the right side armor of his ship had found out.  
  
"Well, Sir, this corrosive doesn't seem to be a gas, or a liquid, or a solid. In fact, I have no idea what exactly it is. Whatever it is, the pods are coated with it and the missiles have some sort of warhead containing it, and when they touch a metal surface, such as the hulls of our ships, it spreads rapidly and with disturbing ease. It's like nothing I can describe that well, we've never encountered such an effective weapon. Not to mention, of course, we haven't got a single defense against it, except for not coming in contact with the pods and not allowing the missiles to impact, which, in the case of a Frigate, is quite out of the question."  
  
"Would point-defense of some sort be able to shoot them down?"  
  
"It's possible, but that would require major upgrades to every capital ship in the fleet from Frigate-class and up, and even if a good point-defense turret was created without too many problems represented by such a small size, the missles are traveling at an incredible speed, at a guess, I'd say about 3 times as fast as our fighters. We'd have to somehow upgrade to even faster tracking turrets in order to come anywhere near shooting at them accurately."  
  
"Well, notify weapon research of this idea, nonetheless."  
  
"Aye, captain." Dren hovered over to the tactical command station. The commanding officer stood up immediately and walked over to him.  
  
"Well, after taking a quick look at the telemetry of the battle, I think it's safe to say that statistically, we probably shouldn't be alive after that encounter. If we had entered hyperspace about 5 seconds later, those corrosive missles would have ripped us apart." Contrary to popular belief (and it was often the downfall of a rookie captian), ships are still vulnerable while entering and exiting hyperspace, as the battle at balcora gate in the HomeWorld (the second war) war had proved. "And it's a good thing we left when we did, as I have no idea what would happen if we breached the hull during a hyperspace leap, but I really don't think I want to know. I've got my best people working on those fighters, but they're having difficulty. For some reason, they seem to have an absorbant armor plating, and we cant successfully scan them. The only thing we know, at this point, is what they look like."  
  
"What about their engines? Are they conventional drives, or something else? They seemed ridiculously powerful to me."  
  
"They were, and as far as I can tell from the videos, they weren't conventional plasma torch/fusion drives." Before he could ask, she continued. "And I know this because their projected output was much higher than ours, and it didn't leave the same energy and particle signature that a plasma drive does. As a matter of fact, it didn't match any sort of engine that we have, conventional, high-speed, or even experimental."  
  
"Well, in that case, what sort of engines were they?"  
  
"They seem to give off a mixture of charged hydrogen and oxygen molecules. I don't fully understand how they work, but they are quite powerful, producing a mixture of the two, and the reaction they create is a highly unstable creation, but a powerful propellant. If we could destroy one of them and get a good look at it's engine, I think we might be able to reverse-engineer a hybrid of our own."  
  
"That would be incredibly useful, espescially if-" The Nav officer suddenly shouted for him.  
  
"Captain, you're gonna want to come look at this. . ." Dren walked over and looked over her shoulder at the screen, which had the hyperspace monitor active at the moment. "I'm getting some anomalies in the particle waveform surrounding the ship, but I don't know how to describe it. It's almost as if foreign bits that are also in hyperspace are approaching us, but what could they be? Debris from space can't enter hyperspace on it's own, can it? But that would mean that it'd have to be another ship of some sort, but that would mean that. . ." A huge explosion rocked the bridge, and another quickly followed from somewhere near the ship's left. "We've been hit! The ship is being thrown off course! Quantum waveform collapsing, prepare for emergency hyperspace exit!" The ship began to tumble, and far in front of them, they saw an opening in the ifinite light-blue field, the exit to realspace. "Everybody hang on- !" The ship continue to roll onto its side as it shot toward the exit, pulling massive Gs. It breached the gate, and in realspace, the gate opened, slid along the length of the Frigate, bit by bit, then closed, as it merged back into space, it instantly regained its former speed, speeding along as other Frigates started opening their own gates, and shooting out along side themselves. Dren and his crew were reeling form the extreme gravitational forces, but he somehow managed to shout out an order.  
  
"How farther to the hyperspace gate!?" Someone managed to give a response.  
  
"We're nearly there, just about 500 metres more!"  
  
"Get us stabilized and get into that gate, NOW!!!"  
  
"But, Sir, what about the others?" At this point, the portals of the unknowns had opened, and the carrier and multiple Frigates were exiting and preparing to fire.  
  
"Get them in the gate, too! Kharak knows I'll not leave behind my brothers!" Suddenly, the carrier launched a single, new sort of Frigate. It was sleek, slightly crooked, with a diamond-back design, and colored a deep purple with multiple lights flashing across its surface, but a large port of some sort at the front and posistioned to the left. "Oh, no. . ." A ball of yellow-white energy formed at the tip of the Frigate, growing steadily, then dissapeared as a beam took its place, and fired at them, making contact with the engine, then split off several smaller beams, connecting with various parts of the other Frigates, and a ball of energy formed at those spots. "Great Sajuuk have mercy. . ." The spheres exploded. By some great stroke of luck, only their engine ignited, propelling them forward at an insane speed, while every other Frigate detonated. Through the screams of terror, Dren opened his eyes and watched as they flung into the hyperspace gate, entered hyperspace, and the scene before him dissapeared. They were safe, for now, and were heading home. He passed out. 


	3. Foriegn Investments

Revalation Ch. 3 - Foriegn Investments  
  
Author's note: Yeesh, been awhile, hasn't it? Kk, new ships, good dialouge, among other things. And now, back to writer's block. . . --;;  
  
The replay slowly came to an end. And the chamber burst into a buzz of frightened conversation.  
  
"As you can see, this new enemy is of terrible strength, and powerful weapondry. We currently have no defenses against them, however, recent breakthroughs in neo-organic hull-plating may possibly give us a defense against these corrosive projectiles. Now, as you have just seen, the enemy attcaks fast and suddenly, immediatly destroys all opposition, and then dissapears or gives chase, as they see fit. Their fighter class shipsare highly manuerverable, and operate on an oxygen-hydrogen mixed combustion engine, also giving them unparalled speed. Our only hope of advancing to these levels of design is to study one of their engine mechanisms ourselves. This is why we are seeking the Bentusi. We have reasonable doubt to the fact that the Bentus was really the last of the Bentusi, and this sector reains one of the last un-explored, and as an added bonus, we have seen no signs of any enemy actvity here for decades. Nevertheless, we are all to remain on the highest alert, espescially the 9 of you who are our pilots of the newly-designed Nexus fighters. Dismissed."  
  
They had just finished watching the replay of Skar-Tel massacre, and Dren Sher-Ka himself was there in that room. He was captain of that particular Destroyer, one of three, with full Frigate and a Single carrier escort. There were also 2 Battlecruisers on standby at the closest shipyard (Nerr-Kun in particulr) and ready to hyperspace in if need be. Nuun-S'jet, his Firstmate, another survivor from Skar-Tel, was the one giving the speech. As he stepped down from the podium, Dren eyed him while he collected his papers and then came over to him. He saluted, Dren stood and did the same.  
  
"Well sir, everyone seems ready."  
  
"Ready for what?" Dren responded smirking at S'jet. He rolled his eyes in response.  
  
"You know what I mean. Ready for anything." Then, in an afterthought, he added, "Sir."  
  
"Well, I should hope so. And pray to Sajuuk we find the Bentusi."  
  
"Yah"  
  
"Right then. If you'll excuse me, I have to go command this destroyer now. Wouldn't want to steer us into anything icky, and with that new guy at the controls, that's just what'll happen. Bye."  
  
"Farewell, Sir." S'jett turned and walked away.  
  
"And don't call me Sir!" He called after him, then turned away himself and entered the elavator. He pressed the button for command deck. The elevator hummed to life, and rose quietly.  
  
As the elevator was moving he opened up one of his file folders he had been carrying around everywhere. He had been doing this so he could finish reading everything in them. But the the file he kept going back to was the file on the Nexus fighters.  
  
The Nexus fighters had just recently been made aware to the military, and it is of an obvious fact. These prototype fighters intergrate a radical new design along with breakthroughs in vernier rocket manuevering systems, and special condensed railguns. The frame of the fighter is built around the highly classified engine design. This particular engine is a recently-discovered concept, based upon slamming a proton and an electron together at high speeds. These smash together but do not explode or merge, they instead destabilize themselves, thus canceling each other out, at which point both cease to exist, creating a critical-mass after-image of both, a shell that collapses and gives off nuetrons and a new sort of plasma based off of a newly-discovered element (element 121 to be specific, yet it remains unamed). The plasma is then vented through a conical drive shaft that is created by the nuetrons given off (weaving themselves into a web that can contain the superheated plasma), and as it is forced through the narrow cone it increases in speed, at which it becomes far too unstable for a suitable use. However, it is possible (and nescassarry) to split a majority of the plasma off into side channels leading to the verniers located all over the ship's hull. The rest of the plasma has much smaller mass and is much easier to contain and control, and ironically, this smaller amount is more concentrated than the original mass and provides better overall speed and acceleration as it is propelled out of the ship, providing thrust and foreward momentum. The verniers are all connected to the same gyro control system, and are all linked to provide maximum capabilities and near perfect manueverability. The weapon systems are reinforced railguns (3 to be exact) located on the ship in certain points so as they are not affected by the extreme Gs the Nexus is capable of. Research has proven that a tight spinal mount for the three in a triangular configuration yeilds the best results. The ammuniton of these rail drivers are large tungsten rods 20 feet long and 1 foot thick, fired using a small contained he-3 nuclear reaction to the rods. He-3 is a natural opposite of tungsten's composistion, and thus the reaction easily propels the rods to near light speed. These rods are given the impressive force and speed as such, and are capable of shattering near any sort of armor with disturbing ease. However, one must ask where the rest of the force goes, specifically, the he-3 energy, seeing as every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This energy is shunted through a Particle deaccelerator and into the nearest 3 verniers, and as an end result, the Nexus' manuverability is best while pulling up, or to a downward diagonal. These complex systems are built into a semi-radial fashion on a vertical alignment, leaving litle room for the cockpit and lifesupport systems. As an end result, when designs were pushing the Nexus into corvette class, a 2 pilot split design was created, putting a pilot on either side and slightly above and behind of the frontal gun, with life support just in front of the engine array. There is one specially modified Nexus fighter, however. It has instead 4 railguns, and the 4 advanced verniers, and a longer nose to the fighter. It can barely sustain any sort of life, and therefore only one specific pilot who has undergone months of training is the maximum crew for the Nexus-AU.  
  
As far as Dren was concerned, the whole thing was total higgedly-piggedly, but the diagrams were excellent. And that was all that mattered.  
  
The elevator jerked to a stop. The lights went out. The pleasent elevator music stopped. The artificial gravity turned off.  
  
"Huh?" Dren grabbed his communicator and radioed S'jet. "What the Hell just happened?!"  
  
"Sir! We have just been hit by an EM pulse, sir!"  
  
"Dispense with the sir! What's happening outside?"  
  
"I'll radio the carrier and see what they've got!"  
  
He switched to the ship's intercom wave length. "He didn't call me sir this time. Wow. Stress will do that to you." He activated the communicator and patched it into his headset, and turned on the PA. "Attention! Attention! All crew members of the destroyer Quen-Sal! We have been hit with an EM pulse, please stay where you are, return to your posts if possible! Emergency protocols 1, 3, and 8 please!" He thought to himself, "Those will activate the emergency power genreators, and it should get some gravity going. But I'm stuck in the freakin' elevator!" His communicator buzzed to life, jolting him back to reality. He realized he was sweating.  
  
"S'Jet to Captain Sher-Ka! Come in please!"  
  
"Go ahead, S'Jet"  
  
"Faal-Shun (the carrier) reports that over half the frigates are down and out, but all of the Nexus fighters have successfully performed a manual launch. They still have power thanks to that new lead sheilding, or something. Where are you, sir?"  
  
"Somewhere between the mess hall and the bridge"  
  
"Ah, the elevator. Right, we're getting power back on soon, I'll divert some to your elevator, how bout it?"  
  
"Do it and you'll be a rich man. I HATE not knowing what's going on!"  
  
"Aye, sir"  
  
Dren sat down in tha dark and fumbled with his wristband. "I know that flashlight's on here somewhere- got it!" A small beam of light appeared and he shone it around. He didn't know why he did that, just so he could make sure everything was the same and safe. He sat there, banging his head against the wall, when suddenly dull red lights flashed into existance all around him, as the female computer voice stated,  
  
"Emergency power - Online" The elevator hummed back to life and rose at twice the speed it normally did, with some nice classical music on.  
  
"Nice touch", Dren commented.  
  
"Thank you, sir" The computer replied.  
  
"Don't mention it" Why had they given the computers a personality? It didn't make sense! Oh well. He stood up as the elevator grinded to a halt and the doors finally opened onto a scene of madness. The red light from the emergency power weren't helping. Dren turned left and raced down the halway, or more, he bounced, he had forgotten about the reduced gravity factor. "Ow!" He exclaimed as he smashed into the Bridge door. It opened and made some remark about using your head, but he ignored it and ran inside. "Status report!"  
  
"Sir, we have multiple contacts on incoming vectors!"  
  
"Oh Sajuuk. It's happening again."  
  
"Beg your pardon, sir?"  
  
"Nothing, just find out what is going on!"  
  
"Our Frigates were attacked by short-wave EMPs that were triggered by missile impacts. We have an ion-trail forming a web around our fleet's posistion. There is more than one of whatever's out there, and if you ask me, that was just a diversionary tactic."  
  
"So you mean that-"  
  
"Yes, they're coming from where we won't see it!"  
  
Dren activated a comlink with the Faal-Shun. "Get everything that can fire a bullet on high alert and facing outward, something big's coming!"  
  
"How can you be certain-"  
  
"Just do it!" There was an explosion nearby that rocked the ship. "Too late! Launch everything! Attack whatever is out there!--" He was drowned out by another explosion. He looked out the window and saw beige-colored contrails mixed with the blue. He turned and saw a small fighter streak by and vaporize one of his fighters with twin Ion beams. "Wait a minute. . . Com 1! Open all hailing frequencies!"  
  
"Aye, sir!"  
  
"Attention Bentusi vessels! We are the Hiigarans! We are not your enemies! Why do you fire on us?! Have we not signed numerous intergalactic peace treaties!? What is the meaning of this attack?!"  
  
Then, a new voice. A Woman's voice, soft yet firm. "Bentusi. When did I last hear that name? So many cycles ago, it has been. No, young Hiigaran, we are not the Bentusi. We are the Araan."  
  
"The who?"  
  
"The Araan, foolish flicker-being. We are exiles of the Bentusi race, a different unbound than our anscestors, the fools they were."  
  
"I don't understand." The explosions stopped.  
  
"No. You wouldn't. We apologize for the loss of your brethren. Please, come aboard our ship. We have much to discuss."  
  
A hyperspace gate opened in front of Dren's eyes. It was not white, nor any color. It was infinitely pure, an ever-changing well, as a ship materialized out of it. "It's beautiful. . ." 


End file.
